The Bold and The Determined

Two sides of the Superhero Coin

Issue 4

This session happened February 6, 2010. Any dates given are in-game dates.

Channel 12 News at 10:00 PM

Authorities are investigating an apparent gang fight involving a vehicle at the corner of Stratford and Lowell roads. The bodies of several members of an alleged street gang were found crushed under an overturned Ford Econoline van. The police will not confirm the rumor that some sort of metahuman actually picked up and threw the van onto the alleged gang members. One officer, asking not to be identified, said “Look – it’s Monastery Hill. They claim to see all sorts of strange things here.”

The Real Story

The Determined

We open with Dart surrounded by the toughest members of the Green Street Tigers, led by Sying Wu, Dart’s rival from the Storm Dragon Dojo. Sying Wu has just called out Dart for being weak and causing the death of their master. Wu also indicated that the Green Street Tigers are here to witness Dart’s defeat and to deal with Dart’s “Red-headed girlfriend”.

Brick, who is red-headed but NOT Dart’s girlfriend in any way, was at the corner across the street and this lit her short fuse. She drew down on Wu, but missed (missing Dart also, but that really wasn’t high on Brick’s list of concerns). Wu ordered the Tigers to “kill her” and the fight was on.

Bruiser announced his presence by ripping up a mailbox and throwing it thirty meters to flatten one of the Tigers. The Priest, taking a clue from Crazy Elmont (a homeless person The Priest had been talking with), noticed that something strange was happening down at the brownstone The Determined were ostensibly staking out. He ran across to Bruiser to re-direct Bruiser to the brownstone.

The plan completely changed when the Green Street Tigers encircled Brick and brutally pummeled her into unconsciousness with their baseball bats.

Enraged at seeing someone beaten like that (let alone one of his few friends), Bruiser ran to a nearby van, lifted it up, and started slamming it down on the Tigers. The Priest fired a flash grenade shell from his shotgun at the Tigers, blinding most of them. Bruiser expended his rage on the Tigers, repeatedly smashing the Tigers with the van while The Priest picked off those Tigers Bruiser could not reach with beanbag slugs from his shotgun. Few Tigers survived this combined assault.

While this was happening, Dart and Wu fought a lightning fast Kung Fu duel. At first neither could land a blow, but when Wu came in for a crucial strike, his street fighting instincts allowed him to avoid being hit by Dart’s counter-strike and land a heavy blow. Dart was able to quickly recover from the stunning effect of the blow, but was never able to turn the tide back in his favor. Wu landed two additional heavy blows and Dart went down. After shouting epithets at Dart in Cantonese (and deciding the angry freak hefting the van was best left alone), Wu and the three remaining Tigers left the scene.

Bruiser, his anger expended once the Tigers were down or fled, provided first aid to Brick, bringing her back to consciousness. Brick’s body quickly shrugged of the effects of the beating she had taken, by which time Dart had also recovered from his beating.

In the meantime, The Priest returned to investigate the group’s original goal, the brownstone down the street, from which he now heard screaming. As he arrived at the building and readied a solid slug in his shotgun to blow off the door latch, three members of DEMON barreled out of the building, apparently fleeing for their lives. The trio of Bruiser, Brick, and Dart arrived and Dart quickly subdued two of the DEMON Brothers. Before he could knock-out the third, a monster leapt from the interior of the brownstone and shredded the DEMON Brother. The blood-spattered monster (Cotzbalam) snarled at The Determined. Clearly DEMON had accidentally released something they could not control.

During the rough fight that followed, Dart was injured by the beast. Bruiser incidentally discovered it had a vulnerability to sacred attacks when Bruiser dumped gasoline on it that immediately lit from a sacred fire shot The Priest had fired earlier. This overwhelmed the beast and it fell unconscious. Bruiser dragged its unconscious form into The Priest’s sacred fire, hoping to destroy it. Oddly, while the short-lived flames kept the beast unconscious, the beast did not burn, nor was The Priest able to banish it.

Dart entered the brownstone looking for…anything, really. What he found in the basement was a destroyed ritual space, bodies torn asunder, and a rent in the air that led…elsewhere. After some discussion and surmising that the rent lead to Xibalba (the Mayan Underworld), The Determined threw the monster back through the rent, along with the dismembered bodies of the DEMON Brothers and as much of the ritual material as they could. This was more than Dart’s stomach could take, and, after several minutes heaving, Dart left the basement.

The Priest contacted Brother Timmons at the Monastery of Saint George the Martyr, reporting what they had found. A small group arrived from the monastery and made preparations to watch over the rent for the week it would take to seal and keep anything from coming through. They seemed to be very knowledgeable and competent on the subject and assured The Determined they were up to the task. The Determined decided to take the monks at their word and discretely left, wanting to avoid any official attention.